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Re:Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40... by Koshkin on Monday January 13, 2020 @06:09PM (#22039787)
Not exactly only mathematical, though - you can feel it as you walk across.
Re:Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40... by shpeedy on Monday January 13, 2020 @06:26PM (#22039932)
I feel also air field (wind), height field (land), light field (photons), and so on.
Re:Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40... by Koshkin on Monday January 13, 2020 @06:53PM (#22040156)
My point exactly - fields are real, they are not merely mathematical models. (It's just that some words acquire a more precise meaning, being formalized as part of a model, and while it's true that models may contain an additional "scaffolding" that has no analogue in reality, field is not one of those.)
Re:Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40... by shpeedy on Monday January 13, 2020 @07:28PM (#22040436)
Field is mathematical abstraction, used in mathematical model, to represent a physical thing.

Physical things are real. Mathematical abstractions are not. OpenGL is not real too, but it looks very real and accurately predicts reality. In OpenGL, field is array, e.g. "float[][][] field;".

Re:Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40... by Koshkin on Monday January 13, 2020 @08:26PM (#22040874)
That’s like saying, “Cat is a word used in a language to represent a physical thing.”
Re:Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40... by shpeedy on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @06:31AM (#22043819)
No, it's like saying that nature is built on kind of vertex buffer, because OpenGL accurately predicts reality.